I've been really bad at this lately.

I've just been crazy busy and I'm trying to move out of/find someone to move into my house - more to follow when I've actually sorted this out and have a new place to live. But at least it's the 16th , so we're officially half-way through the worst month of the year. I didn't think the 'January blues' were a thing, and then I got back here last week and discovered they were a thing, and I had them. There is of course, every possibility I was just home sick and in a horrible mood, but blaming the time of year is just easier.

And if anyone's looking for a room in Brussels let me know - because apparently this blog has also become a sales pitch.

Then it snowed. It looks great don't get me wrong, I like snow as much as the next person, but I've been running maybe 3 times since I got back here and now it's too dangerous for me to even walk. I'm very lucky in the fact that I get to work from home quite a lot at the moment so I don't have to risk my life walking to the office, but even a trip to the bank this morning took about 3 times longer than it should have; and to those people who saw me nearly fall on my face - I hope you enjoyed it, I really do. In all honesty everyone else probably isn't finding it this difficult to get around, but I'm not that stable as it is, I'm not really expecting to make it out of January in one piece.

And yes, I know the picture of the snow isn't the most artistically brilliant one, but it's largely melted in the bits of Etterbeek that look nice because those are the bits where people move around a lot.

But in more positive news we went out on Saturday night and had probably the best night out since we got here (I say this a lot, I know, but it's for real this time) - I've really fallen back in love with going out since moving here, thanks Brussels.

This is another really short and uninformative one, I swear I'll be better at this once I've stopped showing people round my house every day/worrying about being made homeless very swiftly. I'll also explain just how I got to the point of needing to move out in the first place, I promise.

So I'm gonna take some time here to recommend some other people Youtube/blog wise you might want to check out just because I feel like this post should be good for something at least.

Touchdemode.com - This girl can put an outfit together, and her site looks brilliant, check it out.

http://www.youtube.com/user/thatssojessicaful   - I hope she doesn't mind me putting this here, but sometimes I watch this girl's videos and I just feel like she's stolen my brain.

And if you follow @thirdyearabroad on Twitter they always re-tweet some pretty good stuff from other people who've decided that moving once to go to university wasn't enough, and want to do it again 2 years later.

À bientôt!

xx

Happy 1 month in Brussels!

Can you believe it, as of last Saturday I've been here an entire month. I was actually crawling into the house at 6am Saturday morning - marking the time to the second that I first got here just 4 weeks ago. Needless to say I was just as tired but had spent the last 14 hours having much more fun than the first time around.

Aside from that, this week I have:

• Been kidnapped by a metro driver - apparently hilarious to close the doors before Marika could get on and drive away cackling like The Child-Catcher, leading to an epic journey, actually mainly down to the fact that we stayed on a tram for farrr too long and so basically went in a circle...


• Used translation headphones for the first time - getting the volume and language changing buttons mixed up when I was trying to write at the same time was a particularly confusing moment.


• Become increasingly angry and whoever shares a wall with me in the house next door - your alarm is your phone vibrating, and evidently it doesn't wake you for a good 15 minutes, but it does wake me, an hour before my alarm is due to go off. I will find you, and I will set you a more effective alarm.


• Bedding! - And as a result have just had the best 2 nights sleep (and possibly a nap on Sunday evening) of my (Belgian) life.


• Gone for my first run in about 8 months - my body definitely knew it. It can only get better.


• Finally been to a club with like, other young people in it, and good music and everything - that would be the getting in at 6am I mentioned, the best night I've had in a while.


• Done tourist-y things with my family - like see the Atomium, Mini Europe, eat overpriced sandwiches from a tiny cafe and be made to pose for countless photos with everything we saw - apologies for the ones included below, after 4 hours sleep, I was not photo-ready.


• Made exciting plans - including a home visit in November and a visit from a very good friend (Sally, I know you read this, and yes, this is you) in December so we can enjoy Belgium in all its festive glory.


• Finally caught up on Homeland - cannot believe I left it this long, brilliant.


• Probably used Skype more than the rest of my life put together - this would be the disgusting bit where I say thank you to anyone who's Skyped/messaged/spoken to/seen me this week - but that would be highly embarrassing, so I would never do that.

Songs of the post:

Placebo - Nancy Boy

The Vaccines - Ghost Town

Jay-Z & Kanye West feat. Frank Ocean - No Church in the Wild

Rolling Stones - Start Me Up

The Black Keys - Tighten Up

Royal Crescent, Bath. My piece of my second home in my third one.

Due to Italian traffic, the closest I've ever been to Pisa.

Bonne journée!

xx

Good news

It feels like I've done a lot complaining in these posts since I moved here, although that's hardly because I'm not enjoying myself, and mostly because posts saying 'everything is great!' would be short and not very interesting. So this post is going to be some good things,one tiny tiny bad thing that was so disappointing  it can't go without comment, and some photos.

Good things:

• Well first of all Brussels is lovely, I'm settled and very much enjoying myself, also we get 2 new housemates this weekend and meeting new people is never a bad thing.


• Turns out the 'third time lucky' myth really works, third time walking to my meeting building and I got there absolutely fine (and without wandering round streets I had no reason to be on), have since made the journey twice more with great success. And never without an umbrella.


• My coat arrived, it's actually way too warm to wear at the moment but I'm now fully prepared for the infamous 'Brussels weather'.


• The self-service machines in Delhaize don't have a bagging area, which is probably the best idea I've ever heard. They also don't yell at you like the ones in British supermarkets do, it's definitely all-round a more relaxing experience if you dislike human contact/are in a rush.


• It's only 5 days until my family get here! I've never been so excited to see them, in 2 years of university I was barely homesick, but I feel so far away over here, and this isn't helped by their inability to use Skype because the home computer is so slow it's actually more time-effective for them to wait for me to come home at Christmas.


• I found a shop that sells these things:
  I think you can still get them in the UK but I haven't been able to find them for years and I'm so picky about sweets that I end up giving away the majority of a normal packet of fruit Mentos, so this is pretty exciting.


• It's only 50 cents for a hotdog in IKEA, and you can get 2 and a drink for €1.50, a packet of 4 donuts is only €1.60. I don't (and probably don't want to know) why it's so cheap, but I'm definitely not swimming in money at the moment, so it was good to see.

One tiny tiny bad thing:

• This barely deserves its own section but it was a pretty big disappointment; basically, when I first visited Delhaize I spotted some pre-cooked waffles with jam in the middle, obviously having just moved to Belgium this was pretty exciting. So, finally, when they came on offer this week I bought some, excitedly went home, only to be completely disappointed. Far too much jam, they tasted nothing like waffles, I only ate half and was so devastated I had to throw the other away.

That bit wasn't very interesting, I apologise.

Some photos:

Au revoir!

xx

Some photos of Etterbeek & an update

Etterbeek town hall

Etterbeek centre

Etterbeek centre

My house :) My room is the lowest one on the right with the balcony

So over the last few days I have:

• Booked my bus tickets to see my lovely Australian friend Alex in Bristol.


• Been told that my parents aren't coming for another 2 weeks (it was this weekend, then next, now it's the 6th of October), so that's just more time I have to spend sleeping in a sleeping bag feeling like a squatter in my own room.


• Discovered that two streets I thought ran parallel to each other, in fact, don't, and so ended up taking the full hour of time I'd allocated myself to find a meeting that was 25 minutes away, thoroughly breaking in my new shoes (and feet) in the process.


• Ordered myself a coat from ASOS, because it's absolutely freezing here already.


• Started watching Jonathan Creek online, and remembering why I loved it so much when I was younger, and also questioning my parents viewing decisions for their child.

Au revoir!

xx

Packing up

So I'm less than 2 days away from moving my life to a little room in Etterbeek, Brussels and I thought I'd start blogging because it's probably the easiest way for anyone who cares to see how this move pans out given that I will no longer be easily contactable by phone and sending out group emails is a bit weird. This also might end up being where I post stuff I think is cool, or it might crash and burn within a couple of weeks, it's basically completely dependent on how interesting my life is.

I still have a list as long as my arm to get done before I go, most of it will involve making phone calls and being stuck on hold for longer than the conversation will actually last and printing things (which I'm still struggling to do despite the fact the printer is literally a yard away from me). I also don't have a phone number, a bank account, or a map. Oh, and I don't really speak French well enough to have meaningful conversation. So overall, it's probably fair to say this is going pretty well.

But despite all this, hopefully, the journey will run smoothly, my lovely landlady has agreed to meet me at the house herself, which is also luckily not too far from where the bus drops me off, and only ten minutes away from where I'll be working. All of which is much appreciated when I have to travel by myself and I don't arrive until 6am on Saturday. Another piece of great news is that I'm not expected to dress too smartly in the office, so (fingers-crossed) I won't have to buy any more clothes on top of the minimal shopping I've already done. This might not sound that exciting, but if you were my bank balance, I promise you would be ecstatic.

I think that's all I've got for now, realising only yesterday that I had no currency has confirmed to me that I think I've still got ages to prepare. I have not. So I'm going to go and panic for a bit and hopefully make it to Brussels in one piece :)

À la prochaine!

xx